AMG Review of Naughty Platinum Rock

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

The title sort of explains it all with Portrait/Columbia/Legacy's Naughty Platinum Rock. Or it should, at the very least. As it turns out, none of these 19 songs are all that naughty, they're just relics from the golden age of pop-metal, the late '80s and early '90s. There are a few things that date from the first part of the '80s, most notably Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Comin'," Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever," and Quiet Riot's "Mama Weer All Crazee Now," but for the most part it's all Bush-era hard rock. In hindsight, few songs here seem really raunchy, but a few of them do make for pretty good strip-club anthems, such as Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)," Warrant's "Cherry Pie," Ratt's "Body Talk," and Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls." It all hangs together pretty well, there are only a couple of moments that drag, and, as of summer 2000, there aren't too many compilations that cover this era as well as this. Not a flawless compilation, but for casual fans of slick, glossy, catchy '80s metal, this is a good choice.